Going from lab to market

Weather prediction is big business

By BBC News Online technology correspondent Mark Ward

A plan for a business based around weather prediction has won the top prize in the first year of a competition designed to make scientists think more like entrepreneurs.

Other winners include a gadget to instantly recharge mobile phones, and drugs to accelerate wound healing.

The competition was run by the University of Cambridge, UK, and the Massachussets Institute of Technology, US, as part of a larger alliance to encourage entrepreneurial attitudes among academics.

The UK university is also running courses for academics to help them understand the business world and find out what it takes to commercialise the technologies they are working on.

Business brains

Last year saw the establishment of the University of Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre that has the job of giving scientists and researchers at the institution the skills to commercialise the technologies they are working on, and to build a business around them.

The centre has been established with government grants, but its continued existence will depend on securing private funding and recouping cash from equity stakes in companies it helps to found.

Peter Hiscocks, director of the entrepreneurship centre, said the centre also ran a lecture course to demystify the business world, and help researchers get over their reluctance to mix commerce and science.

"One of the things we want to do is change the culture so business becomes a valid alternative," said Mr Hiscocks.

Early advice

Often, said Mr Hiscocks, scientists used to setting the pace in an academic discipline were reluctant to commercialise their ideas, not because they had trouble making a business work but because they were uneasy dealing in a an unfamiliar world.

The entrepreneurship centre also gives advice on how to write a business plan, helps secure early funding and shepherds companies through their earliest months of existence.

This year, the centre has set up a competition to make science students think commercially too. The competition, which distributed £50,000 of prizes to the winners, encouraged students to write and prepare a business plan for a company based on the research or course work they were doing.

Although the idea for the business plan competition came from the Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre and MIT, the actual competition was run by a student association known as the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs.

One a week

The first winners included a idea for a company called Weather Informatics that intends to provide bespoke long-range weather forecasts drawn up by Dr Emily Shuckburgh, a physicist and an expert on global weather systems.

Other winners included Zap Wireless, which wants to make instant rechargers for mobile phones and laptops.

The idea for the entrepreneurship centre has been largely copied from MIT where it has been a big success.

Ken Morse, managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Centre, said it was helping launch at least one company a week.